[the perpetual bed]

1998

online software application

[the perpetual bed] is an online world that emulates my 91 year old grandmother’s experience during a hospitalization where she floated in and out of consciousness and coherence. The environment allows the participant to explore boundaries between the real world and a dreamlike state using animated photographs of people and places from my grandmothers life. Users can interact with each other from within a navigable, surrealistic narrative situated in the world of my grandmother’s dream-state. A hybrid between video, interactive art, installation, and animation, the game relies on the movement of the user to encounter experiences with transparent yet tangible beings, memories, and places engaged with when seeing space in alternate patterns.

[the perpetual bed] tells a story in an altogether different way — by allowing the participant to move through a story, to “happen” upon a scene, and to find his or her own meaning in this ever-enacted place. In this way, it is as though film fragments were taken from the cutting-room and suspended in space with a particular organizational logic.

Created using VRML coding, an early internet format for creating 3D objects and worlds online with which multiple viewers can directly interact across a range of networks, the project was well received in the interactive media/digital art/performance arena. A custom VRML browser was built to facilitate real-time performances where participants around the globe could leave artifacts, texts, and interact with others. Thus, participants in these performances can then leave their mark and become part of the story– through hints, impressions, dialogue –for the next viewer. This residue becomes part of the world, ready for the next participant to discover.